portion of the artwork for Sam Rasnake's poem

The Artist Alone
Sam Rasnake

Self-Deceit, Rome, 1978–1979

She crawls a maze of cold and damp to the very edge of familiar. All truth is blurred. Leaning against the wall, the mirror, more in place than out, is how she looks at her real hand—if those are the best words—as if she doesn’t remember why she’s come—all sinew and shade, soft curve of the hip, a bit done for—or why her hand has lived its life and she has lived hers, lost in the hard ruins, unwilling to stop until she disappears into that other Rome, slick with rain and more time than could ever be needed.

These walls are no match for her. She hides because there’s nothing left. She turns away her face, her motion a haze to silence, her breath a fragile wing of air.


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FRiGG: A Magazine of Fiction and Poetry | Issue 29 | Summer 2010